Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health, has announced an additional £240m for NHS’ Technology Fund, taking the total that the government and local NHS organisations will invest under the scheme to £ 1bn over three years. The Department of Health is adding to the existing £260m Safer Hospitals Safer Wards Technology Fund announced earlier this year and extending it by a year, so its investment is set to be £500m by 2016. If their bid is successful, local health and social care organisations then have to match the funding taking the total available to £1bn. Criteria for the new fund will be released soon.
In his blog, Hunt said the government will not repeat Labour’s mistakes on NHS IT spending, promising innovation driven by local healthcare providers working in the interest of patients. The overarching aim of the investment is to create proper interoperability in the NHS, something that the erstwhile £13bn National Programme for IT in the NHS also promised yet failed to deliver.
Today’s statement focuses on the ability to book GP appointments online and on enabling out of hours doctors and A&E departments to access patient records. The DH also claims the new funding will help deliver on the government’s commitment to allow everyone to book GP appointments and order repeat prescriptions online by March 2015.
Whilst it’s still not clear exactly how this will work – as we understand the funds are only available to NHS Trusts, not GPs or other primary care organisations – in theory the additional funding should be good news for SITS suppliers, particularly those with products or services that enable interoperability between GP and acute settings and online access to patient records. This includes the likes of EMIS and INPS in primary care and ACS in urgent care. However, given the NHS’ track record with technology, we remain sceptical as to whether such a relatively small pot of money can deliver the government’s ambitious goal of a paperless NHS by 2018.